Sermon for the Second Sunday after Pentecost

‘And he said “Legion, for we are many.”’

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Thus saith the Lord: ‘I was ready to be sought by those who did not ask for me; I was ready to be found by those who did not seek me. I said, “Here I am,” to a nation that was not called by my name. I spread out my hands all the day to a rebellious people.’ But they only replied ‘Keep to yourself, do not come near, for we are too holy for you.’ Therefore the Lord has promised ‘I will not keep silent, I will repay.’

The Lord has come, ‘not to bring peace, but a sword.’ ‘To cast fire one the earth.’

Our Lord Christ is not a harmless God. Neither is He a
harmless man. The Son of Man bears no sword; but the sword of his mouth shall
slay all His enemies.

Know this of the Son: that He is power, dreadful and
almighty; terrifying and unassailable. And know that it is for this reason that
you love Him. You do not love Him because He is simply kind and charitable;
that He is forgiving and heals the sick. You love Him for the same reason the
princesses of old loved the heroes that murdered their captors, their rapists.
You love Him because He is violent, but He has come to do violence on your
behalf.

For when He is kind to the woman caught in adultery, is He not attacking those
who lift up stones against her?

When He is charitable to those thousands who are without bread in the
wilderness, is He not rebuking the earth that refuses her fruit to fallen
mankind?

When He is forgiving, is He not throttling the throat of the accuser, Satan
himself, who daily casts your reckless iniquity before your mind’s ever seeing
eye?

When He heals the sick, is He not making war on Death, the final enemy, and all
the power of sin which delivers frail humanity to the teeth of Sheol?

He who declares ‘I am the Lord’ has
come to break the Leviathan, the Whore of Babylon, the Great Dragon, the
Serpent of Eden; the Father of Lies.

Christ is in the ‘country of the Gerasenes’ and there He ‘met a man from the city who had demons.’ Such is no coincidence, for our God seeks out the demons that dare defile His image.

The Lord asks the demon ‘What is your name’ the demon responds ‘Legion, for we are many.’

Indeed, many are the devils that savage our souls and maim our minds; That turn our own flesh, flesh perverted by our Original Sin, against us; that drive us to lust, to addiction, to hatred, to self-destruction. Indeed, this is the desire of the whole demonic horde, not that they destroy us, but that we will to destroy ourselves.

The demons plead: ‘I beg you, do not torment me.’ ‘And they begged him not to command them into the abyss’ So the Almighty casts them into a herd of pigs, which shall find their end in the deeps of the sea, there to await there final end, there to away ‘the abyss.’

It is no coincidence that Christ ‘met a man from the city who had demons’, for our God seeks out the
demons that dare defile His image.

For know you not that, having the Spirit descend upon Him in the Jordan, the
Lord ‘immediately was cast out to the
wilderness to be tempted by the devil for forty days’?

There He fasted, there He waited, there the Lord endured the words of Satan.
And what were those words? ‘Is it not
written?’ ‘Are you not the Son of God?’ ‘Did God not say?’ The devil speaks
no original words; he is not creative; indeed he cannot create, for there is
only one Creator. He only twists the words of God to serve his own hellish
purpose.

Yet against these perversions, Christ replies with the Word of His Father, the
Word of God, the ‘sword of his mouth.’

From the desert is Satan driven, and the Lord returns to the land of
Israel, to teach, to preach, and to destroy. Yes, destroy; to lay waste to sin,
death, and all hell.

A war has commenced, the prince of this world against the
Crucified. In the Lord’s first coming, the invasion against the Evil one began,
and ever since the Church has carried on the struggle; conscripted by the font,
strengthened by the Eucharist, armed and guarded by the Word; armed to strike
at the enemy in battle after battle, ten thousand million every day, a battle
continuous in every Christian heart. A battle desperate, but a battle
triumphant.

Triumphant I say, for the Lord who once came to make war on ‘Satan and all his angels’ will come
again. And as during the great war of the last century, a general of this
nation declared ‘I have returned, the hour of your redemption has come.’ So
shall the Lord in glory, a light terrifying, a fire consuming, a heart
bleeding, a grace embracing, return to redeem us in the dark night of our
struggle.

He shall return, surrounded by endless ranks of angels, burning seraphs and
harrowing thrones; dominions and powers, and all the cloud of saints, robed in
light, guarded by St. Michael, to bring justice to the earth. And we, who in
that day, continue the war in this waking life, shall turn and join them, the
heavenly vanguard, led by our eternal King, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus shall break through the ranks of the redeemed, the baptized, and the
heavenly, to treat with His enemy, as honorable kings of old once did before
the final battle.

In panic, Satan and his demonic horde shall see Him, and ask ‘What is your name?’

And even as Satan twisted the words of God to accuse Christ in the wilderness,
so shall Christ twist the words of the demon for his heavenly purpose and
accuse Satan in Armageddon.

With all the righteous of creation behind Him, and the
myriad blessed about Him, He will answer the damned simply:

[My name is] ‘Legion, for we are many.’

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Preached by Pastor
Fields

Sermon texts: Isaiah
65:1-9; Galatians 3:23—4:7, Luke 8:26-39